Deseret Loses Challenge To Dredging Law

December 27, 1985|By Mike Thomas of The Sentinel Staff

In a decision cheered by water managers, the 5th District Court of Appeal in Daytona Beach ruled Thursday that a Deseret Ranch dredging project on the St. Johns River is not exempt from state regulations.

The decision sets several precedents in environmental law and increases the clout of the St. Johns River Water Management District in regulating farms in the river's headwaters, district officials said.

''This is a day late for a Christmas gift but it's very nice,'' said Henry Dean, the district executive director. ''It beats what I got yesterday.''

An attorney for Deseret, Segundo Fernandez, said he had not seen the ruling and could not comment on it.

The ruling upholds a decision by Osceola Circuit Judge Cecil Brown.

The 300,000-acre ranch sued the district in 1984 over the permit requirement after officials stopped the ranch from dredging canals and using the spoil to build up dikes along the river in south Brevard County.

The ranch was doing the work to prevent flooding on low-lying property, which was part of the river marshes until it was diked and drained for pasture in the 1940s.

The district said Deseret needed a permit to do the work, but ranch officials said they were exempt under Florida law because they were maintaining an existing drainage system.

The ranch, owned by the Mormon Church, also claimed that the work was exempt because it was on land isolated from the river, or what is known as a closed system.

The court ruled that because water from the property is dumped into the St. Johns, the land is not considered a closed system. The ruling means that only small ponds and reservoirs will be considered closed, not vast tracts of land diked off from a river system, said Christopher Skambis, an Orlando attorney who represented the district.

''This finally clarifies what that exemption was, and gives us the

jurisdiction we felt we had all along,'' Skambis said.

The court ruled that a landowner cannot rebuild dikes that have not been maintained for years and are no longer functional.